TO THE COURT OF AYA. 
21 
of the sand-hills along its banks, where they are 
nearly perpendicular, and generally from seventy 
to eighty feet high. The whole country here¬ 
abouts is evidently of alluvial formation. The 
hills, at first view, appear to be sandstone, but in 
fact are nothing more than sand of a moderate 
hardness, every where more or less intermixed 
with gravel, sometimes very large, and at others 
minute. Situated generally below the sand, are 
beds of iron-stone breccia, and stalactitic masses 
of calcareous sandstone, the debris of which is 
widely scattered over the bank of the river. It is 
here, and in the ravines between the hills, that the 
petrified wood, which I have so often mentioned, 
is to be found in such abundance ; but in the first 
mentioned situation we found also another object 
of still greater interest, a quantity of fossil bones. 
These appeared to be those of an animal of the 
size of an elephant—of one about the size of an 
ox, and of an alligator. We obtained in all, in our 
two excursions, fourteen or fifteen specimens along 
the bank of the river, in a distance not exceeding 
in all a mile and a half, from which circumstance 
the abundance of such remains may be fairly in¬ 
ferred. The quantity of fossil wood which we 
met was quite extraordinary. It appears here and 
there on the surface of the hills—in great quan¬ 
tities on the bank of the river, but most abun¬ 
dantly in the ravines. In this latter situation it 
